Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday February 07, 2014 @08:02AM
from the no-coins-for-you dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "Russia has banned digital currency Bitcoin under existing laws and dubbed use of the crypto-currency as 'suspicious'. The Central Bank of Russia considers Bitcoin as a form of 'money substitute' or 'money surrogate' (statement in Russian) which is restricted under Russian law. However, unlike use of restricted foreign currencies, Bitcoin has been outright banned. The US Library of Congress has issued a report examining the regulatory approaches national financial authorities have taken to the currency."

There's a lot of laws on the books that are just there to trump up charges on people breaking the law. Regardless of what country you are in. I remember a few years back some people robbed a jewelry store, and were charged with (among other things) "wearing a mask while committing a crime". Laws like this are in place to create longer jail sentences for those involved.

Well, to be honest, this is not a Left or Right problem, this is a problem with not understanding what crime actually is. Wearing a mask, during a crime is not a crime, or even an extension of crime. They added a penalty because it makes it harder to identify the criminals. Boo fucking hoo.

But people want to punish the evildoers.... so we get crappy laws that make crimes that aren't crimes.

Speaking of libertarians. Where are all the property-is-everything, guns-and-freedom, company-defending people now? My opinion on the beta is, yes, it sucks. But do you guys really think you own this site?

No. They are owned by the site. They are the product, sold to ad agencies, and the site is the manufacturing facility. The Beta is a new manufacturing process line being constructed, and the complaints are product being rejected by quality control. If the issues are not resolved by the time the new line goes live, manufacturing volume will suffer, customers will not have anything to purchase, and profits will suffer.

There is nothing libertarians hate more then a free market that fails to cater to their specific needs. After all, if the market does not serve them, some sinister force must be preventing it, or other people are stupid (yet somehow in a real free market, the stupid people magically no longer impact it). Just look at all the iPhone hate going on right now... oh no, not a private company doing something that benefits itself and the vast majority of users do not care about! Apple must cater to them and t

Speaking of libertarians. Where are all the property-is-everything, guns-and-freedom, company-defending people now?

Being libertarian doesn't mean you defend everything that companies do. It just means you think that if Dice wants to treat us like we're irrelevant there shouldn't be a law against it. It certainly doesn't mean those in the community can't express their negative opinion of Dice's behavior, boycott the site, etc.

Well, if the technology itself got wide spread enough, it could really help with fraud and identity theft. Right now with most payment methods you give them your secret numbers and they pull money from your account, thus anyone who intercepts the secret numbers can also pull money out. With the BTC protocol the merchant gives you a secret number for pushing payment in, which significantly reduces the risk of a 3rd party being able to use it to hurt you. That has significant utility for pretty much everyo

Really, I'm pretty sure the former residents of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima would beg to differ and point out that the beta is nothing like nuclear power plant disaster.

Save your outrage for sometime in which it is appropriate. Shaking your fist here won't change the fact that Dice has effectively nuked slashdot.

I'm not outraged. While I see some issues with the beta, and have reported them, personally, I'm ambivalent to it. Basically with classic or beta, I can get the information I am looking for.

I think it's kind of like KDE 4, Gnome 3 or even Unity. People don't like change and they are quick to condemn it (although in fairness the developers of KDE 4.0 said it wasn't production ready). But for all of the hoopla over them, people sure seem to be using them. Change is inevitable and the whole "F*ck Beta" approa

Change is inevitable and the whole "F*ck Beta" approach is juvenile and ultimately counter productive.

Change is inevitable. So is death. And in this case the change for the worst seems to be bringing the death of the community.

Also, I don't think that "counter productive" applies here. This looks suspiciously like a change driven by ulterior reasons; perhaps Slashdot Beta is some Business Genius's personal pet project, perhaps someone at Dice wants to shutdown Slashdot for political reasons, whatever. But

Now that russians have banned bitcoin, Western press and media will rush to praise this currency and write statements about how russians want to destroy the western and are intolerants.

Western governments might have to admit they want to do as evil as the russians have done regarding Bitcoin or let people escape their monetary control with the propaganda of the "freedom and liberty in the western "

Well, guess I'd better use my mods points before they're worthless, huh? Anyway, Russia banning Bitcoin should remind all the Obama-haters and Putin-lovers that Russia still somewhat on the authoritarian side. I've never gotten the mindset that just because Putin likes to stick his finger in the American Empire's eye, that he's a strong supporter for human rights, liberty, etc. I will say that America probably has surpassed Russia in lack of real liberty in recent years (yeah, they'll throw you in jail for exercising free speech, but we're drowning in laws that we often don't know we're breaking until we get arrested and our lives ruined; they have an incarceration rate that is half of ours, etc), but that just means we're worse, not that they're better.

The Central Bank of Russia considers Bitcoin as a form of 'money substitute'

That is an insult. Regular money can be made "at will" by banks and the fact that it is only handed to society for usury ("interest") and some real-value things (like houses) as security, makes it drain any society at no cost to the banks themselves. The funny thing is that all banks can create money, but private persons are criminals when they do exactly the same.

Bitcoins do not come with built-in usury and cannot be made infinitely. Bitcoins do not have built-in discrimination about who can abuse who. Bitcoins are more than a money substitute: Bitcoins make sense. Our current money system does not.

The Central Bank of Russia considers Bitcoin as a form of 'money substitute'

That is an insult. Regular money can be made "at will" by banks and the fact that it is only handed to society for usury ("interest") and some real-value things (like houses) as security, makes it drain any society at no cost to the banks themselves. The funny thing is that all banks can create money, but private persons are criminals when they do exactly the same.

Bitcoins do not come with built-in usury and cannot be made infinitely. Bitcoins do not have built-in discrimination about who can abuse who. Bitcoins are more than a money substitute: Bitcoins make sense. Our current money system does not.

Money is whatever people use to pay for the exchange of goods and services. In prison, cigarettes are money. When the Europeans first set foot in North America, they gave the natives various trinkets in exchange for goods. The Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan for about $24US worth of beads. Money is whatever people say is money.

We've had sad experience though in some people pulling scams or abusing employees with fake types af money. So we've made laws about what can and can't be used as tender to protect ourselves from these wrongs.

We've had sad experience though in some people pulling scams or abusing employees with fake types af money. So we've made laws about what can and can't be used as tender to protect ourselves from these wrongs.

Which turned out to be a mistake, because the use of fake-money scams has never been even approximated by anybody other than governments.

You do know that the Federal Reserve created a minimum of $17 Trillion new Dollars during "the crisis", right? That's the entire productive value of three hundred mi

Ah yes, a currency based on wasting electricity makes sense. What color is the sky on your planet, the planet in which you need more emissions to thicken your atmosphere? Because here on Earth, Bitcoin is fucking offensive and stupid.

So those precious metals deep underground just magically appeared on the surface?Those printing presses, dyes, ink, and paper just magically transported themselves from the outside trees, other plants, and/or animals??

Methinks you need to re-think what you are railing against.

As I explained before, there are 3 levels to understand what money IS:

- the exchange of physical things aka barter,- a token the exchange of a common unit (physical or di

It's not a question of whether Bitcoin costs something; it's whether the inefficiencies associated with Bitcoin (the electricity and hardware costs to sustain the network) are more or less than the inefficiencies associated with other currencies.

No it's not. That is a common misconception. What happens with a loan is a "mutual debt". Your bank gives a promise to pay (NOT money!) against your promise to pay the loan with interest. Only if you want the real money instead of passing the numbers around, the bank will have to use "its" (its customer's) reserves. There are laws in some countries that say the bank has to make sure it has the lend-out money after two weeks, in which case the bank loans it from a central bank, which has no obligation at all

If you can't get "Close and don't show me again" right, then you shouldn't be coding a whole new Slashdot. I see that fucking notice every time I come here and click "DON'T SHOW ME AGAIN" each time. Oh, yeah: FUCK BETA.

Russia banning Bitcoin will have relatively little effect on the use of Bitcoin there since enforcement is highly selective and not dependant on established law.

OTOH if Russia bans it, the US (and its hangers-on) will have to think twice about banning Bitcoin. Heaven forbid the old foe gets it right, and first. Absent strong motivation, the US does not want to be seen as supporting Russia, particularly not ideologically on some matter of principle.

If the US can't tax it, they'll ban it. Right now the IRS goes after every source of personal income, whether it was earned in the US or in any other sovereign nation. Think about that. You're a US Citizen living outside the US. Any income generated by you is subject to US taxation even though you may have not earned the money in the US and you're not living there. So if Bitcoin can't be tracked and taxed, ultimately the US govt. will ban its use because it goes contrary to their money-sucking dreams.

Say I mine for silver as a business in a big plot of land, zoned to make it legal. I mine tons of ricks and those rocks have lots of silver in them. I let the rocks stay as rocks as long as i want. Can I be taxed by the IRS on the amount of silver in the rocks that sit in a pile? The silver amount hasn't been realized. They are a pile of rocks (raw material). They have no value until i separate the silver. The silver can be stored in a closet. It has no value until it is realized as a form of currency

Indeed, bitcoin is a protocol used to push around numerical value (which are counted is bitcoins, BTC).Your IRS or any other tax service shouldn't tax bitcoin, just the same way that they don't tax your paypal account (as is litteraly putting a tax on the e-mail address itself) nor (for a more extreme metaphore) put a tax on your credit cards (litteraly taxing the actual bit of plastic with a "Visa" or "Master card" logo on them).

Bitcoin protocol is a mean to exchange value (except that you don't directly push around any official currency, but instead you push BTC around and convert to/from BTC using exchanges, payment processors, etc.)This is exactly the same as paypal is a service used to do online payment, and as a credit card is a mean to do payment.

At the end of the day, a merchant using BTC as mean of payment, will exchange them to a local currencies (USD, EUR, whatever is here around) usually in a completely automatic manner (using a payment processor such as coinbase, bitpay, etc.)
So at the end of the day, a merchant will make revenue in local currency (USD, EUR) and that what the merchant has to declare as a revenue:the flow of USD/EUR/etc. going to the merchant's bank account. The tax service shouldn't give a fuck is that money was conveyed using paper money at a cash register, or using commercial centralised payment methods like PayPal or MasterCard, or a distributed crypto-currency as bitcoin.What matter is at the end of the day, a merchant made XXXX USD/EUR and has to pay taxes, social charges, inssurances, etc. from this amount.

Also, to the poster above: please stop spreading the disinformation that bitcoin can't be tracked. In fact, the whole security principle of bitcoin lies on the exact opposite: every single transaction is broadcasted to the whole network, so every single node is able to verify it.

The closest thing the bitcoin protocol has is "pseudonymity". Identity of parties in a transaction aren't directly disclosed in the clear:- it's not 'Mr XXX, living at adress AAA' has sent bitcoins to 'Ms. YYYY living at BBBB'"- it's more like 'account [public key 1]' has sent bitcoins to 'account [public key 2]'On the other hand, if Ms. YYYY happens to be a merchant, she has the name and address of Mr. XXX and can map it to a public address. Government have enough ressouces to do such mapping on a large scale and completely remove any anonymity.But you're shielded from your neighbours accidentally discovering that you spent money at a sex-shop.

Goods cannot be taxed before they are sold. Your rocks with silver are safe. You may have them registered as inventory, or as raw product, or anything in between, but until your business sells them for MONEY you do not owe tax.

That would be the same case with BTC. However recently the US Government acknowledged that BTC is MONEY. This means that once you receive a Bitcoin in your possession, you may owe tax on the profits (if there are a

Usually, income taxes in the US are on actual dollars made, and producing or acquiring something with the intent to sell it in the future is not taxable. If you start using some other sort of currency to buy and sell stuff, then that does become taxable. If you sell some good or service for BTC and convert it into cash, that cash is taxable, but not necessarily the BTC. The IRS will get its cut when you convert the BTC to cash. If you sell something for BTC and then buy something with that BTC, then th

The edit window should be configurable in Preferences. Once you click "Submit" the comment is posted... but only for you. You can see it in the context, reread it, change if necessary... (editing restarts the timer.) Once the timer expires, the comment is posted for everyone.

This would be a function that is available ony to logged in users, since it's much easier to follow the identity with a cookie. AC comments are published instantly, and they cannot edit them (because they cannot be easily linked to

Well, it's not over until the fat lady sings. I wouldn't set a death date yet. But I have to say the site is quite messed up right now with all the comments talking only about the suckiness of Beta.

I do see two problematic things:

1) They already asked feedback Oct 1, 2013 [slashdot.org] and didn't listen us. Why would they this time? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."2) As you said, the Beta site is currently so far from something usable that they will have a lot of work ahead if they actually want

I think we should mark yesterday, February 6, 2014, as the day that Slashdot died.

Yesterday may be the day that the coroner declared the victim to be dead, but the fatal disease was contracted when Dice.com bought Slashdot. Slashdot is a vibrant community built around a tainted well, and Dice.com is the entity that poisoned that well.

Honestly its been two days can we stop bitching about the fucking beta?

Is it still there?

Is it still by design different enough that it cannot be made to do all the things classic can do?

Is the plan still to replace slashdot with it?

If the answers to these questions are "yes", there is a need to continue our picketing.

This better continue until the site is improved by scrapping Beta as the failed project it has proven itself to be, and until Shravan Goli [generalatlantic.com] has been replaced with someone who understands this particular business and why people (and thus advertisers) come here.

I care about Slashdot. A great deal. So much so that I don't want to see it run into the ground. Which is exactly what will happen with the Beta - it is broken by design, and cannot be "incrementally improved" until it works as well as the flawed system I use now.As long as the managers are unwilling to see this, shout it. Shout it louder. Don't let Slashdot die due to someone's pride and a vision of "unified" experience from someone who doesn't even understand that this is a contributor site, not an audience site, and the fundamental difference between the two.

You have the power to change the site.You do not have the power to change the contributors.When the two clash, keep in mind what people come here for, which attracts advertisers. Hint: It's not to look at the design or headlines.

Honestly its been two days can we stop bitching about the [expletive] beta?

Bitching about the beta actually still serves a useful purpose. It demonstrates that the primary use of the moderation system here is to push personal agendas rather than to objectively rate comments. Objectively speaking, your comment either should be left alone, because your point is obvious, or it should be promoted to +1, because it's valid. However, in terms of the prevailing agenda, your comment actually deserves its demotion from 0 to -1.

Moderators, thanks demonstrating the enforcement of Slashorthodoxy. I'm not sure whether or not my own comment is orthodox, but if you disagree with me that moderators here push their own agenda, feel free to demote it.

It's not bad, but it's buggy. I'm using it on my phone right now and every time I try to mod you up it sends me to the home page. It also seems to only load the comments successfully about half the time.

On the desktop the front page looks more modern, but when browsing topics I can practically fit the same amount of content into my window as before. I don't see how the beta style negatively impacts my browsing or the usability of Slashdot in any way. This whole beta protest is making me think that a large portion of Slashdot users are close-minded retarded assholes just itching for a reason to troll and spam. As soon as you voice a different opinion not in line with the "fuck beta protest" you get modded t

On my desktop you can only fit about half as much content, and it has definitely negatively impacted usability. Also it's missing some key infrastructure changes that should have been top priority that were ignored for making it just seem more modern.

No, bitcoin is the new Dollar. Soviet Russia had (at times) a full maximum sentence penalty (15 year was the maximum sentence in SU) for private Dollar trading. They are Ok with people holding dollars now. Now they can dilute the rubles in sync with diluting dollars. You can't dilute bitcoin, so you can expect both countries (and eventually Europe) to start having harsher and harsher penalties for it.

If it's going to die, the quicker they kill it, the less painful it is, as long as there's a Perens or an OkianWarrior, or whoever, to provide a substitute.

Why would a Perens or an OklanWarrior want to mess with this whiny group of people? All that can be surmised is that if they did do it but not do exactly what slashdotters want they will get flamed and runned into the ground, too.

The more you tighten your grip, the more the Slashdot community will fall through your fingers.

(BTW, we are a community and not "a audience".)

By definition, you are an audience. Even the banner for slashdot states that it is news for nerds. So, not only are you an audience, you are a targeted audience. A community is a group that holds common values. If you want to propose that slashdot viewers are a community, what are the common values that bind all of the viewers?

The more you tighten your grip, the more the Slashdot community will fall through your fingers.

(BTW, we are a community and not "a audience".)

By definition, you are an audience. Even the banner for slashdot states that it is news for nerds. So, not only are you an audience, you are a targeted audience. A community is a group that holds common values. If you want to propose that slashdot viewers are a community, what are the common values that bind all of the viewers?

I'd say it's because of 'News for Nerds' chosen by Nerds and then commented on by Nerds in a relatively information dense way. Once in a while if you mine the comments then you can learn something interesting and useful. If there isn't anything worth reading you may have a decent opportunity to *write* something meaningful. Like bitcoin mining it becomes more difficult as time progresses and you have to put more energy into it.

I don't know what slashdot values mean to anyone else, however I know what they

But anyway, I'm not making the same mistake twice. I bet the Slashdot beta will be a fucking smash. No, not with the current crowd crowd of users, but with the Bitcoin loving, Justin Bieber listening crowd. Dice will make bank, I'm sure of it. Now, if only there was a way to cash in on this knowledge...

Heraclitus said that "The only thing that is constant is change." Slashdot isn't immune to that, so people have the choice to embrace the change and help make it better or to fight it and be left on the sidelines.

Heraclitus said that "The only thing that is constant is change." Slashdot isn't immune to that, so people have the choice to embrace the change and help make it better or to fight it and be left on the sidelines.

The only thing that is constant is change, but few rejoice when the end comes. Slashdot might be old and decrepit, but it is still a piece of history from the Internet revolution, and for many of us a long-time companion. Given the personal and cultural significance, the tone of the comments is un

It's only an increase if you convert it to something useful, like real currency before the market crashes. Which it will. Bitcoin wasn't "designed" to do anything useful. It's a science fair experiment. As with many other prototypes, it got rolled into production without any thought whatsoever, and it is causing chaos. I wish the experiment well. Perhaps the lessons learned after the inevitable crash and burn will inform the next digital currency, which may actually succeed.

Are you sure you know what bitcoin is? Comments like yours would say otherwise. There is a laundry list of what is useful about bitcoin. To deny they exist is bias or ignorance. You may have issues with it, but that doesn't make your comment true.

You can always trade stocks and foreign currencies. BTC is just one kind of foreign currency. However this trading is just speculation; you do not produce anything new in the process, you do not enrich the planet with results of your labor. All that you do is you transfer money from pockets of less lucky (or less wise) people into your pockets (assuming that you are more lucky or more wise.)

The linked official press release simply reiterates that bitcoins are getting more wide use including criminal use. That the bitcoins are not legal tender. That bitcoins are not backed by anything or anybody but speculative interest and that bitcoin holders are not afforded legal protection of their property rights in respect of their bitcoin investments. Is the word "banned" being misused here?

From the translation:

In accordance with Art. 27 of the Federal Law "On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation", "the official currency (currency) of the Russian Federation is the ruble. Introduction on the territory of Russia and other monetary units issue money substitutes is prohibited. " Certain distribution received anonymous payment systems and kriptovalyuty, including the most famous of them - Bitcoin are money substitutes and can not be used by individuals and legal entities.

I'm pretty sure the ruskies would have a strict interpretation of "can not be used by individuals." Sounds like it's a ban.

I'll be interested to see if BTC can hold above $500 at the end of the day.

At least until that site is sued into oblivion.
We've seen in the past where fans kept alive a disposed of product that was far superior to the current product. In most cases, the company trying to monetize their new pile of junk sues to get the superior previous version killed.